Nonfarm payrolls day rewards preparation more than bravado. A simple checklist will not predict the number. It will keep you from improvising when spreads widen at 13:30 UK time. Build the list once, reuse it each month, and update it only when your process truly changes.
Block one: the night before and the London morning
Confirm the release time in UK clocks, especially around US daylight-saving changes. Note the consensus for payrolls, unemployment and average hourly earnings. Record the prior figure and whether revisions have been lively. Skim Fed speak from the past week so you know what officials claimed they needed to see. Reduce unrelated risk if your rules say event days require smaller size.
Write three scenarios in plain English: firmer package, in-line package, weaker package. Under each, state the first markets you will check – dollar, Fed funds futures, US index futures – and what would make you stand aside entirely.
Block two: the final hour into 13:30
Check that your platform is stable, your data vendor is live, and your maximum loss for the event is set. Cancel casual working orders that could be filled in a gap. Decide whether you are allowed to trade the first minute at all; many disciplined desks wait for the initial burst to pass. Re-read your scenarios once. Do not invent a fourth scenario because a journalist posted a speculative leak.
Keep the educational pages on NFP basics, average hourly earnings and UK timing available before the release, not during it.
Block three: after the release
Read the bundle: payrolls, unemployment, wages, revisions. Only then look at your charts. Compare what happened with your written scenarios. If reality matches none of them, your size should be at its smallest. Confirm the story in rates before trusting the first FX spike. If you take a trade, pre-define the invalidation and the time stop – jobs-day edges decay when you turn a scalp into an overnight opinion without a reason.
Log the outcome the same day: scenario used, execution quality, emotion notes. The log is the checklist’s memory.
Review loop after the day
Same evening, score yourself honestly. Did you follow the wait rule? Did you size inside your plan? Did you invent a story that was not in the data? Carry one improvement into next month’s list. Over a year, those small edits compound into a professional routine.
Share the checklist with a colleague or mentor if you have one. External eyes catch vague steps such as “be careful” that do not actually constrain behaviour. Replace vague steps with observable actions: “no market orders in the first two minutes” is clearer than “don’t panic.”
Finally, accept that some months the best trade is no trade. A checklist that only exists to force activity is a liability. Its job is to protect attention and capital while the market digests a known catalyst.
Keep the checklist on paper or a side note the night before so you are not redesigning it under adrenaline. Consistency across months matters more than clever wording on any single Friday.
Rehearse the checklist verbally once in the morning. Speaking the steps aloud exposes fuzzy language faster than silent reading. Then put the list where your eyes go when the adrenaline hits.
What to leave off the list
Leave off predictions dressed up as destiny, revenge rules after a scratch, and any instruction that requires perfect foresight. Also leave off social-media probability captures without a futures source. Your checklist should be short enough to read in sixty seconds while slightly nervous. If it needs a binder, it will not get used.
A good NFP checklist is boring. Boring is the point. It converts a famous macro circus into a repeatable routine. Building routines like that is a core trading skill, and the free assessment at assessment.samuelandcotrading.com is a sensible way to test whether your process is actually clear when the clock hits 13:30.
